Interview: Mick Hucknall of Simply Red
By Will Harris

The tale of Big Star is one filled with critical acclaim and commercial indifference, but thanks to the three albums the band released during the '70s - 1972's #1 Record, 1974's Radio City, and 1978's Third / Sister Lovers - the band has gradually found a devoted fanbase over the years. Regrettably, the majority of its membership is no longer here to appreciate it: of the foursome who founded Big Star, guitarist Chris Bell died in a car crash in 1978, frontman Alex Chilton suffered a fatal heart attack in March 2010, and bassist Andy Hummel succumbed to cancer only a few months later, in July 2010. Thankfully, drummer Jody Stephens still walks the earth, happily flying the Big Star flag - and still playing a little music - while also serving as general manager at Ardent Studios, where the band recorded the aforementioned trio of albums.

Rhino: First of all, it’s good to talk to you again. You may not remember the first time we chatted – it was during the flurry of press you were doing when Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me was being released – but if nothing else, I was probably the only person to ask you about Van Duren that day.

Jody Stephens: You probably were! [Laughs.] And he’s come up several times recently, ‘cause we’re doing a tribute to John Fry and John Hampton. It’s April 22. The Gin Blossoms are gonna play, and Jon (Auer) and Ken (Stringfellow) are coming in, and we’re gonna do Big Star songs. And one of our other bands is kind of a… I don’t know, kind of a Black Crowes-y / metal band called Tora Tora that’s pretty cool is gonna play, too. It’s an interesting combination. Us and the Gin Blossoms make sense, but Tora Tora? [Laughs.] But when they were, like, 17 or 18 year old guys, they worked with the production company we developed with Ardent, so it actually does make sense, but…well, anyway, not to digress or anything!

Over the years, you’ve come to know him as a member of The Syndicats, Tomorrow, Yes, Asia, GTR, Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, and Explorers Club, but it should never be forgotten that Steve Howe also has a formidable career as a solo artist. If you have forgotten, however, or if you somehow never knew this to be the case, now’s the perfect time to correct that situation, as Rhino has just released a two-disc anthology which provides a 33-track summary of Howe’s work as a solo artist. In conjunction with the anthology’s release, Howe took some time to chat about the origins of this collection, some key albums in his solo discography, and the chances of seeing a new Steve Howe album in the future.

Rhino: So whose idea was this anthology? Did Rhino approach you with the suggestion, or did you say, “I want to do something comprehensive to cover my entire solo career”?

Steve Howe: Well, that, yeah. I had the idea at a few stages in the last 10 years, say, but when I got to 12 albums, I suddenly thought, “You know, it might be good to do that now.” So I got together with Virgil (Howe, Steve’s son), we got a rough idea of what was happening, and then we talked to the people at Rhino, and it started to move forward. It was a bit slow. Last year we kept bouncing the idea around, and then we suddenly got a green light. [Laughs.]

Rhino: How was the experience of trolling through the back catalog and revisiting all of the material again?

SH: Well, you know, I haven’t totally lost touch with any of it. Periodically I like to review my music and see it’s nonsense or if it’s any good. [Laughs.] To see how I feel about it now, because your feelings kind of change. So I just waded through it. It’s a lot to do – Virgil and I sat down for three different sessions, and they were about three or four hours each – but we took every album on board and discussed it and just kind of generally reveled in it a little.

There are likely comparatively few music fans who think of Mike Rutherford for his work as the founder of Mike + The Mechanics over his efforts as a member of Genesis, but – believe it or not – Rutherford has had the same number of chart-topping hits in the U.S. with both groups: one. Oh, sure, Genesis may have had far more hit singles overall, but they only hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 once, and that was with “Invisible Touch” in 1986, while Mike + The Mechanics ascended to the top spot with “The Living Years” in 1989.

We mention this for three reasons: 1) to remind you that Mr. Rutherford’s side project was pretty formidable in the charts back in the day, 2) to have an excuse to mention that we just reissued Mike + The Mechanics’ Living Years album in a deluxe edition with a bonus disc, and 3) to make sure you’re aware that Mr. Rutherford and his Mechanics are just about to hit the road for their first American tour in many moons. (Grab your tickets here.) In advance of this much-anticipated jaunt, Rutherford hopped on the phone with Rhino, kindly giving us first crack at him on a day before beginning a big day of proper interviews.

Midge Ure is one of those musicians for whom your frame of reference depends heavily on when you first started paying attention to music: he had his first #1 hit in 1976 as the frontman for a teeny-bop band called Slik, teamed up with former Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock and future Public Image Ltd. Guitarist Steve New to front The Rich Kids, saw top-10 success as a member of Visage (“Fade to Grey”), found further chart action when he took over at the lead singer of Ultravox (“Vienna,” “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes”), co-wrote Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” with Bob Geldof, and has had a formidable solo career as well, earning a top-10 hit with “No Regrets” and topping the UK charts with “If I Was.” A few years ago, Ure reunited with Ultravox to record a new album (2012’s Brilliant), but most recently he’s been peddling his top-notch solo wares again, having released his most recent full-length effort, Fragile, last year.

Rhino: First things first: let’s talk a bit about your new album, since that’s how we came to chat in the first place. What are the origins of Fragile? Did you start stockpiling songs until you had enough to make an album, or did you go in with the intent of making an album?

Midge Ure: No, I think it’s been the slowest album I’ve ever undertaken. Ever! I started compiling ideas and started the recording process probably 10 years prior to finishing the record. For a whole slew of reasons, it just took me forever to get ‘round to finishing the thing.

On October 5, 1993, the band Afghan Whigs, who’d self-released their debut album, 1988’s Big Top Halloween, and then came of age with a pair of albums on Sub Pop Records (1990’s Up in It and 1992’s Congregation), finally made the jump to the big leagues – and a major label – with the release of Gentlemen on Elektra Records. Most bands would’ve used the 20th anniversary of an album as an opportunity to celebrate its legacy, but not Afghan Whigs: they waited a year, hence the October 28 release of Gentlemen at 21, an expanded reissue of Gentlemen which will feature the original album as you remember it on Disc One, along with a second disc filled with demos, B-sides, and live performances.

Greg Dulli, Afghan Whigs’ frontman, kindly agreed to hop on the phone and chat about the original album, although he gave fair warning that his contributions to the reissue were somewhat minimal. “I just nodded, said, ‘Yes,’ ‘Cool,’ or, ‘I wouldn’t do that,’” admitted Dulli, laughing. “That was the extent of my involvement.” Having said that, however, Dulli was quite happy to wrack his brain and reminisce about how they came to Elektra, the process of putting together their major label debut, the opportunity to record in one of the most famous studios in rock ‘n’ roll history, the clause in the band’s contract that could’ve made a filmmaker out of him, and whose contract he copied to get that particular deal.

Rhino: Gentlemen was your debut album for Elektra. What was the band’s path from Sub Pop to the label? Did Elektra pursue the band, or did the band start looking for a major-label deal on their own?

From 1977 through 1993, the Thompson Twins – who in their commercial heyday were, as those who lived through the ‘80s know quite well, composed of three individuals, none of whom were related – were one of the more successful of the so-called “new wave” bands, earning seven top-40 hits during the course of their career, three of them hitting the top 10 (“Hold Me Now,” “Lay Your Hands on Me,” and “King for a Day”).

In 1989, after releasing five albums on Arista Records, the band made the jump to Warner Brothers, recording another two albums,Big Trash and Queer, before evolving into a new musical entity called Babble, but after recording two albums in this guise (The Stone and Ether), Tom Bailey and Alannah Currie – the stalwarts between the two groups, not to mention husband and wife at the time– decided to leave Babble behind them.

With Big Trash and Queer having recently joined Rhino’s digital catalog, we caught up with Bailey by phone and asked him to reflect on those albums, the transition from Thompson Twins to Babble, his semi-retirement from the music industry for the better part of the last two decades, and what led him to finally begin the process of stepping back in, as he’s doing this summer as part of the line-up of the Retro Futura tour.

During the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, few teen pop sensations were quite as ubiquitous on the radio as Debbie Gibson. With the insidiously catchy hooks of songs like “Shake Your Love” and “Out of the Blue,” smoldering ballads like “Foolish Beat” and “Lost In Your Eyes,” and – lest we forget – the anthemic “Electric Youth,” Gibson provided the soundtrack to many an adolescence while in the process sending five songs into the upper reaches of the Billboard Hot 100.

That instant familiarity is certainly one of the things that led to her latest gig: serving as a judge on ABC’s new celeb-reality competition series, Sing Your Face Off. Naturally, Gibson chatted with Rhino about her new endeavor – that’s how we came to chat with her, after all – but she was also game to dig into her back catalog to chat about the origins of her sound, writing with Lamont Dozier, getting advice from Ahmet Ertegun, and singing with everyone from Placido Domingo to the Circle Jerks.

The musical movement known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which kicked off in the late ‘70s, is one which never really managed to cross the pond and make a major impact in America, but a few bands in the bunch did make a bit of headway here. Certainly, that list starts with Def Leppard, with Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Motorhead also hovering near the top of the pack, but one which often gets lost in the shuffle – even though they developed a considerable following in various pockets of the country – is Saxon.

While Saxon’s era of Stateside success basically consists of the four albums they released between 1983 and 1986 – Power & the Glory, Crusader, Innocence is No Excuse, and Rock the Nations – you’d have a good chance of finding yourself trading fisticuffs if you suggested to a British fan that any one of those albums should be deemed one of the band’s best. (Their three most successful albums in the UK all came out prior to the four that proved popular in the US.)

Thankfully, you can now enjoy a fuller exploration of Saxon’s glory days and figure out your own favorites, thanks to the release of a new box set: Saxon: The Complete Albums 1979-1988. We had an opportunity to chat with Steve Dawson, a founding member of the band and their bassist through the majority of the albums in the set, and he talked us through Saxon’s birth, success, and creative struggles, their influence on Spinal Tap, and his exit from the band, along with a look into his life in the wake of his departure.

Here’s hoping the members of Spandau Ballet are planning to spend a significant amount of this week catching up on their beauty sleep, because they’re really going to need to be rested, ready, and at the top of their game when next week rolls around:

• On March 12, all five members of the band – if you haven’t had to remember their names for awhile, that’s Tony Hadley, Gary Kemp, Steve Norman, John Keeble, and Martin Kemp – will be at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, attending the world premiere of their documentary, Soul Boys of the Western World, which is in competition in the 24 Beats per Second category.

• Just after it becomes March 13 – at 12:30 AM, to be precise – the band will perform at the Vulcan Gas Company, which will be a decidedly momentous occasion, as it’ll be their first U.S. performance in 28 years.

• At 3:30 PM on the 13th, the fivesome will sit down for an interview at the SXSW Music Conference.

• Finally, on March 14 they’ll be back onstage again, this time as participants in the Official SXSW Tribute to Lou Reed.

Yep, it’s gonna be a pretty exhausting few days for Spandau Ballet…but you’d be hard pressed to find Gary Kemp complaining about a single bit of it.

A few days ago, we hopped on the phone with Mr. Kemp in order to discuss the band’s seminal album, 1983’s True – the reissue of which hits stores today, precisely 31 years after its initial release – and while we had him on the line, we also chatted a bit about their belated return to the States in conjunction with Soul Boys of the Western World. During the course of the conversation, we got a fair amount of insight into how Spandau Ballet’s sound evolved over the course of their career, dug a bit deeper into the importance of True to their U.S. profile, and found out why it may or may not be a coincidence that the new promo photos for Doctor Who find the Twelfth Doctor wearing a jacket which looks like it could’ve been swiped from Mr. Hadley’s wardrobe.